


Brokenly silent

by huntingosprey



Series: JWP2014 [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 14:30:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1902528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huntingosprey/pseuds/huntingosprey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Art is a subjective thing and sometimes the sight of broken things is art and other times, well it isn't. Harry for once is trying to explain John's behavior to someone</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brokenly silent

It was Harry considered later something she should have seen coming a mile off, really she should have done after all she knew John better than anyone. Well anyone still alive, and didn't that thought hurt, and what she knew was that John was a fixer. It was his nature to taken broken things and people and fix them, sometimes by physically putting them back together sometimes by wading in to the fight and standing up for someone or something that he believed in. Not being able to help, not being able to even try and help hurt John much more than any blow or bullet wound would ever do.

So here she was, sat in the art gallery's coffee shop with a very perplexed Mary Morstan trying to explain to her probable future sister-in-law why that picture, the one of the tree growing through a wrecked piano, had made John stiffen so abruptly, and then more or less flee the gallery his face white and tears forming in his eyes.

"No, it's not that he plays the piano," she answered trying to work out how to explain, "it's more that well. _He,_ " she still can't bring herself to mention his name aloud even now "played, the violin, and well, that ruined piano reminded John of the fact that _he_ was broken at the end, something broke him and now his violin doesn't sound any more, like that piano."

And what ever it was that broke him she added in the silence of her head John still blames himself for not being able to fix it in time to stop him taking that fall. Taking a sip of her coffee to cover another sigh she remembered that first weeks after, when John would reverently lift the violin from it's case every other day and gently clean and polish it. Checking that it's strings where secure and that no hairs had frayed in the bow, lavishing all the care and attention he use to give to it's owner on the one thing he'd been able to bare bringing with him from his former home. 

"John'll be fine," she reassured the other woman "it just sometimes, catches him. By tomorrow he'll be back to normal and apologizing for making such a fuss over nothing."

She still wasn't sure why John had taken the violin, sentimental attachment, a relic of happier times or perhaps he'd been hoping to earn forgiveness for his failure to stop the fall by caring for _his_ beloved possession but she was fairly sure that John would be caring for the violin tonight. She could only hope that it would calm him enough that there wouldn't be any nightmares, or that Mary wouldn't start to wonder just how many people there where in her and John's relationship and leave. Harry wasn't sure John would survive another loss, he was a bit like that piano really split in two by an irresistible force and just holding himself together with a few scraps of bark and ivory.


End file.
